Speculation is rife over the future ownership of Attic Futura, after it was put up for sale on Thursday by its Australian parent company PMP Communications.
The usual UK suspects, IPC Media, Emap and NatMags, are expected to make a bid, but it is thought they will face competition from abroad - possibly from Axel Springer and Hachette Filipacchi.
PMP is rumoured to be seeking Adollars 156 million, nearly pounds 60 million, for Attic - publisher of market-leading youth title Sugar as well as B, Shine, Inside Soap, TV Hits, All About Soap, the Official Westlife Magazine and CD:UK, which launched a week ago.
Attic has announced the closure of Real Health and Beauty and Good Health.
Bi-monthly Real Health and Beauty is to become a quarterly supplement to Shine.
Attic has published Good Health since last June, in partnership with Good Health Publications (GHP), after the publishing licence was returned to Jack Hay, owner of GHP, by Cabal Communications, which owned it for under a year. Good Health's last edition will be its May/June issue, on sale 12 April.
Hay said he was in talks with 'two large publishing houses' with a view to relaunching Good Health as a monthly magazine and online brand.
The sale announcement casts doubt over the future of Attic Futura managing director Vivien Cotterill, who joined only three months ago from NatMags.
Attic has a sales team of 32, headed by commercial director Caroline Connor.
To effect a clean sale of Attic, PMP has negotiated an asset swap with North South Publishing, which jointly publishes some Attic titles with PMP. As a result of the deal, which cost PMP Adollars 50 million, Attic has full ownership of Sugar and B in the UK.
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